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Abstract
This research conceptualizes political engagement in Facebook and examines the political activity of Facebook users during the 2008 presidential primary (T1) and general election (T2). Using a resource model, we test whether factors helpful in understanding offline political participation also explain political participation in Facebook. We consider resources (socioeconomic status [SES]) and political interest and also test whether network size works to increase political activity. We find that individual political activity in Facebook is not as extensive as popular accounts suggest. Moreover, the predictors associated with the resource model and Putnam's theory of social capital do not hold true in Facebook.
Keywords
Facebook, political participation, 2008 election, social media, social network sites
Introduction
There is little doubt that social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook have raised the attention of scholars interested in social media's effects on the political land- scape. In October 2007, roughly one year before the 2008 U.S. presidential election, Facebook touted more than fifty million active users with a majority logging onto the system at least once a day (Facebook 2009b), and by August 2008, a little over one month before Election Day, Facebook reached one hundred million active members (Facebook 2010). Social media also played a major role in the 2012 U.S. presidential election with Facebook cit- ing nine million of its users voting in the November elec- tion (Facebook 2012). Moreover, Facebook and other SNS have been used to mobilize individuals to participate in protests around the globe such as the London youth riots in the summer of 2011 and the 2009 Iranian protest against the reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and most especially those in the Middle East, collectively referred to as the Arab Spring. Despite popular accounts illustrating the ability of social media to mobilize users for political activity, little empirical work in the academy has measured the nature of political engagement occur- ring within these sites. The 2008 U.S. presidential cam- paign, often regarded as the first Facebook election, offers an excellent opportunity to address this topic.
While the Internet is not a new player in American campaigns and elections, the 2008 U.S. presidential cam- paign stands out in terms of the prominent role that SNS, in particular Facebook, played. Facebook, for example, cosponsored with...